Dunkirk Lighthouse

Visitors and paranormal groups at the Dunkirk Lighthouse describe music playing with no source, people walking through the keeper's house and climbing the tower stairs, talking and humming, and even a touch from something unseen. The best-known story, told by tour guides, is of a keeper and a man named Charlie who rowed out to rescue two children in Lake Erie; Charlie and the children drowned, and they are said to have stayed on at the house ever since. Another tale names Peter Dempsey, keeper from 1885 to 1902, whose face is said to appear in a photograph. The site hosts paranormal investigations on set dates. The Point Gratiot Light, as it is also known, was first established on the lake in the 1820s, and the 61-foot tower standing today was first lit in 1875. It was automated in 1960 and is still in operation. The Victorian keeper's house beside it, built around 1875, is now the Dunkirk Historical Lighthouse & Veterans Park Museum, with rooms for the Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines and a Vietnam War hallway upstairs, along with navigation artifacts. The complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.